Jessalyn Valios
Jessalyn Valios, also known as the Jedi Witch, was an orphan who began her career as a flight technician for the Rebel Alliance, and was later the first Jedi apprentice to Luke Skywalker in the years following the Battle of Endor. A slender, long-legged woman of Corellian descent, she had a wild mane of wavy red hair, leaf-green eyes, long legs, and a brilliant smile. Her Jedi regimentals were usually green or black, and her lightsaber had a turquoise blade. Eventually she would become a Jedi Master, a member of the Jedi High Council, caretaker and teacher of the Jedi Younglings, and in 19 ABY the Chief Jedi Healer of the newly restored Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Early Life (20 BBY-5 BBY) For many years, Jessalyn was completely unaware of her heritage. The fact that she was the daughter of a Jedi had been hidden from her and the rest of the galaxy for her own protection. Before her birth, Jessalyn's parents were part of a security detail for a scientific survey of Yavin IV. After they were killed, she remained there, raised by a series of foster parents among the small colony of scientists, not knowing anything of the rest of her family left behind on Corellia. One such caretaker was a Corellian xenoarchaeologist named Xavier Nighman, who doted on the reserved little girl. Many years later she would meet his son, Paul Nighman, who would help her track down the truth about her family. From Ace Flight Tech to Jedi Knight (5 BBY-10 ABY) She attended the Corellian Flight School as an adolescent, becoming an ace flight tech, and joined the Rebel Alliance, where she met Skywalker in 7 ABY and rose to the rank of Colonel in the New Republic Support Corps. As a Corellian and a redhead, she was stubborn, witty and kind, yet fiercely loyal and protective of her friends and comrades. But her career in the New Republic was somewhat short-lived when Skywalker recognized her potential within the Force and offered to train her as his first Jedi Knight. Though the feelings between Jessa and Skywalker were sometimes more than that of Master and apprentice, the two never forged a relationship beyond friendship. But at his side, she would help rebuild the New Jedi Order and fight what remained of the Empire and the Sith. Not long after she met Skywalker and his sister through mutual friends in the New Republic (namely, a Wookiee named Chewbacca), Jessalyn found herself pulled along on his adventures, including a mission to rescue Han Solo from Etti IV. Their group of adventurers grew to include Shenneret Veery and Paul Nighman, both of whom became some of her closest friends. Paul, a fellow Corellian and xenoarchaeologist, was a particular source of angst for the young woman, and they spent many years bouncing back into each other's lives as both friends and occasionally lovers. Once Solo had been rescued the group went their separate ways, including Jessalyn. Even though Luke had offered to begin training her in the Force, Jessa was not yet ready to give up on her career and recent promotion to CO of the NR's Support Corps. She helped establish their base on Yavin and for a while she divided her priorities between her duties as a Colonel and a Jedi-in-training. As Luke's first apprentice, she became one of Lara Grayson's prime rivals. She was kidnapped by Noghri agents of Emperor Bacharan Valak on Tatooine in 7 ABY, and later rescued by Skywalker. Once again in 8 ABY, while trying to track down the missing Skywalker on Bonadan, she was defeated by Lara Grayson in a lightsaber duel and taken to Valak where she was held in stasis and would not resurface until 10 ABY when she was rescued by the unlikely coalition of Cort Stasus, Simon Sezirok and Mira Isaria. Even though Jessa was liberated from Valak, it would be months before she could be awakened, for her soul was caught inside an elaborate Sith Mind Trap. Return of the Jedi Witch (10 ABY-12 ABY) By happenstance, a witness to Jessalyn's awakening was Orson Tighe, one of Talon Karrde's employees, who eventually became her first apprentice as well as a serious love interest. As Jessa and her new companions sought out information on the Death Star III, the Selas Simon Sezirok took his own interest in the recovering Jedi, and she tried to lure him back from the Dark Path he had started upon. Her efforts met with failure, and ultimately led to Orson's murder at Simon's hands. Heartbroken and blaming herself, Jessalyn came to doubt her ability to train others in the ways of the Force. Luke Skywalker comforted her with his own insights and helped her regain her strength of self once more. However, there were only more obstacles waiting around the corner. In 11 ABY, a man named Aurejin, a Jedi of the Old Ways who had apparently survived the original Jedi Purge, emerged on the scene and befriended the members of the New Order. Around the same time, an imposter calling himself Palpatine confronted Jessalyn and nearly killed her, but just as she was giving in to her inevitable death, he forced his will upon her, squelching her Self and turning her into a mindless slave to do his bidding. The acts she committed while she was "Palpatine's" puppet would haunt her -- and many innocent others -- for the rest of her life. As she gathered strength to kill herself rather than live this way, the Jedi Aurejin stepped in to save her from herself and redeem her from the imposter's control. Jessalyn temporarily lost her Jedi powers and was horribly burned when she tried to stop Sezirok during a Sith Ritual on Yavin IV. After her recovery, she helped to establish the palazzo on Corellia which became a temporary headquarters for the Jedi Order. She found herself instrumental as a teacher and brought a measure of peace to those who were studying and training on Corellia, including Joshua Arands, Mira and Kyyel Marrak. Marriage, Motherhood and Exile (12 ABY-17 ABY) During this time she fell in love with the clone Jedi Aurejin who brought his own insights from the Old Order to this new grouping of Force-sensitives. After he discovered his own true identity and was prepared to relinquish his soul to the original Aurejin, Sezirok appeared to Jessalyn and cursed her with a Force withering disease. She used the last of her strength to save Luke Skywalker, who had been imprisoned in opalite by a then-unknown enemy named Pantara. As she lay dying, the anguished clone Aurejin relinquished himself to the returning spirit of the original, slain Aurejin -- but the old and new were instead merged into one, and Jessalyn herself was restored. Soon after, in 12 ABY, the two were married. While pregnant with her first child, she stayed on Kashyyyk where she was watched over by the Wookiees, before journeying to Gaena, Aurejin's homeworld, where she would give birth to her son Kiri Valios in 13 ABY. Auotos Beta IV, also known as Gaena, became something of a safeworld for Jedi Younglings, and Jessalyn was their fierce protector as well as their wise Master. She was treated as an honored guest on Gaena by Aurejin's extended family, but she rarely knew her husband's whereabouts and she chafed against her separation and loneliness. From 13 ABY to 17 ABY, she largely remained on Gaena, keeping the Jedi Younglings secreted away for protection from the Sith and any other enemies who would wish them harm. Aurejin's Fall (17 ABY) In 17 ABY, Jessalyn returned to the Jedi Temple on Ord Mantell to resume her duties as a Jedi Master. Around this time, Aurejin, who had not been seen for over a year, suddenly reappeared, but gravely altered, apparently a victim of the Emperor's machinations. No sooner had he returned than he disappeared once more, and Jessalyn and her friends tried in vain to track him down, following him as far as Tatooine where it appeared that her missing husband had destroyed the old homestead that once served as Obi-Wan Kenobi's home in the Dune Sea, and leading to more adventures in Mos Eisley and the court of Draga the Hutt. As the evidence grew that Aurejin had, in fact, turned to the Dark Side, she began to understand that the children once again would be in danger, and she had them sent to a secret location. When she failed to track down Aurejin or discover his fate, her friends and fellow Jedi convinced her that it would be suicide to confront him and the Emperor together, and so she relented from this task and turned her attentions to other pressing matters. In the meantime, she aided in an attempt to rescue the family of a Jedi Padawan named Enb'Zik from the clutches of Darth Malign. Though they managed to at least retrieve the Sullustan's mother, the Jedi were chased from Trandosha to Kashyyyk by Malign's fleet. While staying with her Wookiee friends there, she discovered her old friend Paul Nighman was also looking for her, bearing a surprise: a Sith artifact he had uncovered on a previous archaeological dig. Luke and Jessa immediately understood the danger of this talisman and sent Paul to the Jedi Temple where it would hopefully be kept safe. After the Battle against Malign on Kashyyyk, in which several Jedi were killed, Jessa was reunited with Paul on Ord Mantell and they began to form a plan on how do to deal with the artifact which Malign now coveted. Around this time, several prominent planets were suddenly... disappearing, with no clues as to what had happened to them. Joining a team that included Luke, Lahanna, Enb'Zik and Paul to investigate the "Void" which had once been Corellia, the whole group was afflicted with a sickness that caused horrifying nightmares that prevented sleep, as well as strange glitches and shifts in time. Jessalyn also discovered, much to her dismay, that the Emperor was using Aurejin to track her movements, and used this as a means to find the asteroid colony where the Younglings had been staying. Aurejin destroyed the asteroid, and the children narrowly escaped. Upon learning of this, Jessalyn knew that her estranged husband had to be stopped -- and that her marriage was over. But she was afraid of confronting him and being corrupted by the Dark Side, and while she hesitated, others would step in to act. Once more, Jessalyn was drawn to Paul Nighman, who was the opposite of Aurejin in almost every way, and they decided to renew their relationship and find out once and for all if their destinies would follow along the same path. When Skywalker did what she herself could not do and defeated Aurejin in a lightsaber duel, Jessalyn was reunited with her young son, and found herself free to forge a new destiny for herself. After being led by the Jedi's friends on a fruitless chase for the artifact, the Dark Lord decided to take matters into his own hands. While on Calamari seeking the advice of Molari Canto, Paul's old mentor, Malign abducted her young son, Paul, and her pilot friend Ranma Hoshiakarui, and brought them to his Citadel on Trandosha. There, Malign tortured and experimented on Paul and Ranma, and revealed to him his plans to use the artifact to create a new child-apprentice to be his Sith heir. Jessalyn was incapacitated in her fight against Malign and left behind on Calamari, but when she awoke two days later, she returned to Ord Mantell and sought the help of the New Republic military and government leaders. This led to the Battle of Trandosha, which served as a cover while a small team of Jedi and their allies entered Malign's Sith Temple and rescued Kiri, Paul and Ranma. Jessalyn dueled Malign and he was gravely wounded, falling into a deep pit after Jessa defeated him. But during the battle, Malign revealed to Jessalyn a fact to which she had remained blissfully ignorant until then -- that she had become pregnant. Malign had also learned that Skywalker was guarding the artifact on Dagobah, and soon there was a race to the swamp planet in order to stop Malign from claiming it. In a final showdown on Dagobah, however, Malign was able to collect the energy from the artifact and created the child Lilith for his own evil purposes. A New Beginning (18 ABY) The next few months, Jessalyn remained largely on Ord Mantell while secretly training a new apprentice, Marshal Krieg Inrokana, a high-ranking Imperial officer who had been working for years to sabotage the Galactic Empire. When she discovered he had successfully survived a blind hyperspace jump, Jessalyn knew he must have Force sensitivity, and he became her Padawan in secret. The New Jedi Order saw a surge of new Force-sensitives entering training at the Temple, their numbers more than doubling, and she found herself busy acclimating and giving the first lessons to many new Initiates. For a brief time, things seemed almost peaceful, but Jessalyn knew it was merely the lull before the storm. As Paul stayed by her side during her pregnancy, she prepared not only for the upcoming birth but the imminent showdown with the Empire. In 18.5 ABY, Paul and Jessalyn's daughter Sabine Nighman was born on Ord Mantell. During the labor, an incident in which Paul realized that a piece of medical equipment was not properly sterilized made both the Chief Jedi Healer Alika Kiben and Jessalyn suspect that he had acquired sensitivity to the Force. Around the time of Sabine's birth, a young woman named simply Lyra arrived at the Temple, bearing a number of ancient manuscripts that Paul immediately recognized as being related to a group of Jedi from centuries ago. Lyra's curiosity about the items was linked to her interest in the old "true" Jedi Order, since she felt that this new Order was merely a shadow of its former self and wasn't doing what it should to save the galaxy. Also curious about this history Lyra had uncovered, Paul and Jessalyn accompanied her to Yavin IV, following the trail laid down by the manuscripts. There they discovered a forgotten Sith tomb where they faced a pool that reflected their darkest desires -- and the Emperor himself. In a desperate battle against him, Jessa was struck by the Emperor's Force Lightning and dropped her lightsaber. Paul somehow found the means to pick it up and as the lightning continued to ravage Jessalyn's fallen body, he attacked the Emperor, severing his hands and stopping the assault altogether. Furious, the Emperor called the tomb down around them all, and Paul, Lyra and Jessa barely managed to escape with their lives. Enraged at this defeat, the Emperor placed huge bounties on the heads of both Paul and Jessalyn, and he even went on the offensive, using the Dark Side to incite the residents of New Alderaan to turn on their Jedi protectors and neighbors and attack the Jedi Temple. Not even Paul could resist the Emperor's power, and tried to shoot Jessalyn in the back as she was locked in Force Harmony with the other Jedi Masters, defending the Temple. She easily deflected the shot, but once he came to his senses and realized what he'd done, Paul could not so easily forgive himself for his lack of will. Jessa spoke to Paul at length about his growing awareness of the Force, though they both suspected it was a side effect of the alchemical curse Malign had placed upon him, and urged him to seek training. He grudgingly agreed, and Luke Skywalker took Paul on as a Padawan learner. Jessalyn had also spent her pregnancy researching how she could reverse the Sith curse that Malign had placed upon Paul, which had infected him with Malign's own DNA. A New Republic Intelligence officer named Drax Rendolen was afflicted with a similar condition, and after befriending Jessa, the two worked on a plan to recover the mysterious Healing Crystals of Fire which were once kept at the ancient Jedi Temple on Coruscant for the most extreme cases. After discovering their whereabouts on the desolate and ravaged Imperial planet of Guritsan, Jessa, Paul and Drax traveled there and uncovered the crystals from an underground bunker. However, Drax betrayed them, and during a firefight with mutated creatures who were guarding the stones, he tossed a stun grenade that knocked Jessalyn unconscious before stunning Paul with his blaster and leaving the pair to die by destroying the turbolift shaft to the surface. Only by rigging the communications console and getting through to Krieg's private channel were they able to call for help before lack of oxygen, food and water killed them. Survival proved to have a heavy cost, however. Paul's uncertainties about fatherhood were only could compounded by the unavoidable fact that Jessalyn, as a Jedi, would always live her life dangerously, and someday it might be necessary for Paul to raise the children without her, should she fail to return from some mission. To assuage his guilt and reticence, he dove into his work, disappearing for weeks on end, and ignoring the heaviness in her heart, Jessalyn quietly devoted herself to training her newest apprentice, Lyra. They joined the team of Jedi who traveled to Toprawa to thwart the Imperial genocide on that planet, rescuing imprisoned citizens from death camps before the New Republic fleet could arrive, and meeting up with a group of well-trained Antarian Rangers who aided their efforts. War's End (19 ABY) Around the time of the end of the Galactic Civil War in 19 ABY, official reports of the woman's demise were circulating on the holo news networks, but this misinformation turned out to be a ruse intended to throw off the Emperor's plans. During a mission to an obscure planet, Jessalyn and her party sought out one of the Sith Stones that the Emperor himself was seeking to add to his collection. This final Stone would grant the already seemingly omnipotent Emperor completely power over the Force, making him virtually unstoppable by the Jedi or the New Republic. But the Emperor had tracked their movements and confronted the group. Having abducted Princess Leia, Paul Nighman and the Jedi healer Alika Kiben, leaving Jessalyn herself for dead, the Emperor made off with the trio and the final Sith Stone and brought them back to Coruscant. Jessalyn was rescued later by Luke, who brought her back to Ord Mantell and healed her of her injuries. Together they made plans for a final assault on the Emperor. Allowing the news to spread that Jessalyn had indeed died at the Emperor's hands, the Jedi Witch was sent to Coruscant to infiltrate the Senate chambers and the security systems so that a Jedi team could later sneak in to confront the Emperor. During this final confrontation, the Emperor seized control of the Sith Stones, immobilizing all of the Jedi and using them to manipulate Skywalker to fulfill his own will. Three of his own helpless Jedi were struck down by Luke's hands, and Jessalyn was nearly the fourth. Only when the Force, magnified with memories of his love for Jessalyn, was poured from Paul Nighman into the Sith stones, was the spell broken and the Jedi were able to storm the Emperor and defeat him. In the aftermath, however, the Sith stones took heavy payment from Paul for his interference. The memories that he'd used to squelch their power had been burned away from the Corellian's mind. When he awoke from Force shock the next day, all his memories of Jessalyn had been erased. Heartbroken, Jessalyn threw herself into the work to be done. With the Emperor's death, the war came to an end, the Empire confined to a remnant of its former glory. Coruscant as well was reclaimed, and the Jedi Temple rebuilt, while the galaxy reorganized itself under the mantle of the Galactic Alliance. While assisting with the cleanup efforts on Coruscant, Jessa came across an old acquaintance one day. Her morose mood was not lost upon the man, who suggested that she stop pining for what was lost and seize the present (though perhaps not so eloquently). Taking this advice to heart, Jessalyn turned to another friend for comfort and distraction — or so she thought — a Marine named Vengan Draelis, who the the Jedi healer had treated some months before after a harrowing run-in with the Sith. But what began as a friendship blossomed soon into a full-fledged romance, and in some missions Vengan began serving as Jessa's armed escort and bodyguard. People of Interest * Luke Skywalker — former Master * Kiri Valios — son (NPC) * Sabine Nighman — daughter (NPC) * Vengan Draelis — love interest * Paul Nighman — friend and former love interest, father of daughter Sabine * Lyra — friend and apprentice * Ikihsa Enb'Zik — friend and apprentice * Orson Tighe— apprentice and love interest, died 10 ABY * Mira Isaria— apprentice * Kyyel Marrak— apprentice * Aurejin — estranged husband, died 17 ABY, father of son Kiri * Jace Raven — brother (NPC) * Ajani Valios — brother (NPC) * Darth Malign— nemesis * Lara Grayson — nemesis * Simon Sezirok — nemesis, died 12 ABY OOC Information Jessalyn began as a character on Star Wars MUSH in August of 1996. In March of 1997, the game went IC, and Jessalyn was selected to be the first Jedi apprentice on the game. Many years later, she's still kicking, her story continuing on Star Wars MUSH: New Worlds where she is a high-ranking Jedi Master and member of the Jedi Council. Jessalyn is played by JediWitch, a lifelong Star Wars fan! Valios, Jessalyn Valios, Jessalyn Valios, Jessalyn Valios, Jessalyn